I’m sure most of you have heard the recent news about Borders, and the less recent news about Blockbuster, and how both companies have had to close down many of their stores within the past year. This got me, and no doubt many others, thinking about what the future holds as far as digital distribution taking over all forms of media, anime included…

I’ve been a fan of quotes for many years. I regularly visit sites like The Quote Garden and The Quotations Page, and often take note of quotes I like in things that I read. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at remembering anime quotes and haven’t been keeping track of my favorites other than in my head. However, the site Anime Quotes has a good amount of my favorites…

Being an anime fan for over ten years now, I’ve gone through quite a lot of firsts. Since anime is such a complex hobby, encompassing many different branches of fandom, there are a lot of potential firsts besides just “first anime.” So today I’ll be listing as many of those firsts as I can think of…

During February and March, mall tours promoting Pokemon Black and White are being held at various shopping centers across the U.S. in anticipation of the games’ release on March 6th. This weekend, the tour hit a mall not too far from me in Arcadia, CA. Being the hopeless Pokemon fan than I am, I of course had to go check it out…

I’ve never had interest in being a part of the Vocaloid fandom, but I do have a ton of respect for it and acknowledge its importance in the otaku world. However, a recent question about the popularity of Miku Hatsune via Ask John got me thinking about the differences between Vocaloids and other anime characters in terms of fan appeal…

There have already been many posts about how Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica is subverting the magical girl genre and keeps shocking us with events completely unbecoming of what was originally expected of it. I was naive at first, believing that the series would follow the mahou shojo formula closely, with perhaps a slightly darker atmosphere, as it appeared to do in the first two episodes. But as we all know, by episode 3 the show has become something very different…

I recently finished watching the 13-episode first season of Aria. It caused me to recall a discussion that was circling the blogsphere back in August about the true definition of slice-of-life. Now that I’ve seen Aria, I know why many consider it perhaps the best example of this genre…

Honorifics are a fun part of the Japanese language, especially in the way they spice up the uniqueness of anime for English speaking fans. As most of us will agree, there are tons of anime with fantastic character relationship development and depictions of character interactions. It’s also equally amazing what a major yet subtle role honorifics play in this and how they can offer various interpretations of the characters…